#its a small detail but i like those and im not good enough at astrology stuff to be like. the sole contributor yk

[negative-negative]

people who like astrology what do u think benny erica and rorys zodiac signs would be...

[limey-writes]

can i get a matchup? (if you're not doing them rn that's fine lol, just delete this ask) i'm a nonbinary/transmasc (he/they) with dark wavy hair thats about waist length. i'm pretty thin, but my job is physically demanding so i'm starting to build more muscle. i'm 5'8, pretty pale, and have freckles. i wear mostly black and i like wearing high heeled boots/platform shoes because i get dysphoric about my height.

i like video games, but im also really into astrology, tarot, art, antique weaponry (mostly old guns/swords/knives), collecting rocks, and music (fav genre is dark cabaret.) i really want to learn to play the piano/violin. i also really like plants and want to become a horticulturist.

im very quiet, but that's mostly because i don't like small talk. it's very draining to me and i don't like having to maintain social connections that feel superficial, so for those reasons i can come across as cold or rude without meaning to. it isn't really anyone's fault, i just genuinely enjoy being alone most of the time. i have a very hard time expressing myself vocally and prefer to text or write whatever it is i want to say. i'm an emotional person, but i'm not very expressive around other people. i really only open up around close friends and even then it's not by a whole lot. i always try my best to treat others with kindness, but if someone is continuously rude to me then i just ghost them or i intentionally piss them off for fun. the internet has permanently fucked up my sense of humor. i cant stop spending money on expensive ass clothes/body wash/hair care crap/cologne but i just like looking good and smelling good!! goddamn!!!

in terms of like romance or relationships or whatever: i don't like it when strangers flirt with me and i don't date for fun or anything like that. again, i don't like entertaining surface-level connections at all. i'm very introverted, so i want to be able to give all my energy to the people i'm actually close to. if i'm in a relationship with someone, then i'm 110% serious about it because it takes a lot for me to be close enough to someone to even consider dating them.

(i hope this wasn't too long lmao, i saw in another post that more detail was better so i tried my best to include a lot but not ramble too much)

Your turn for your match-up! (:< And thank you for the extra detail, it does really help!

I match you with...

Sniper!

Mick is the type of man to struggle with connections, so when you can across each other, he definitely appreciated the time he could have to actually fully get to know you. The man definitely can understand the need for alone time, so you can bet that he knows when you need space and when to come around and give you some extra care you might need. He definitely digs the aesthetic and compliments you so much about your platforms, he asks you to read his cards on occasion and listens so much when you want to talk about any sort of astrology to him. He does a lot of travelling, so he definitely loves talking about stars with you whenever you guys hang out together at night.

Whenever he goes on his missions, he makes it such an important part of it to bring you back a new rock you might not have in your collection. He definitely supports your love for plants, definitely would pick up a thing or two to be able to take care of some along with you, ever since meeting you he swears he's never had more plant life in his camper than he did before. Might even bring you a plant you've had your eye on over giving you flowers, but its the thought that matters, no? If you ever showed him your love for old weaponry, you can bet this man lights up and drops so many facts about any old guns he might know, for some reason he knows a lot about it but mainly he likes to do research on what weapon would work best for his line of work soooo, if that explains anything. If you'd let him, he's love to listen in if you ever wanted to practice piano or violin, might even play along with you if you asked him to, Mick is definitely one to appreciate the musical arts, and loves the fact you're so interested in it!

Mick is also in love with any sort of fragrance you use, expensive soaps, etc. He compliments you on any new one you're trying out and gets excited when you show him a new one, on occasion once he knows you well enough, you definitely might be surprised with a new cologne you told him in passing you liked or a new outfit you've been wanting. Sure he might not flat out say he is into you, but he is subtle with his means in telling you he likes you a lot, he likes the bluntness you have if you had ghosted someone rude to you, might even drop an idea or two on how to annoy them since he also finds it kind of entertaining. Once you guys are together, he also struggles with showing proper emotions, so instead he writes you little notes telling you how much you mean to him instead, hoping that gets the point across as best as he's trying to do.

If it makes you feel any better, this man probably laughs at the video of the falling waffle, so if you ever wanted to share any sort of obscure thing you like then you definitely might share the same sense of humor. Sure he takes his time being able to be open with you, but once he feels like you guys have had enough time hanging out with each other, Its like seeing a flower bloom with what other stuff he shares with you. He doesn't mind if you needed more time until you feel comfortable with him, he's a sniper so of course he's learned the art of being so patient with you as long as you need him to be.

[whetstonefires]

"the top three of its forty floors are filled with brass telescopes of every size, pointing in every possible direction, including several that do not exist within the normal three dimensions of space." thats SUCH a cool image / "If any harvest will come." ooh i wonder whats going on / "The roofs are of red tile, the stucco of the houses painted in shades of blue. It stands empty, but has not had time to fall into disrepair." the little bits of detail getting added to the picture im LOVE (1/?)

I’m gonna do these all as one post but broken up for ease of reference, I think.

Thank you! 🥰 Deciding the theme for the Tower and giving it that visual anchor really helped to pull things together. If you consider the whole setup, it seems unlikely the Tower was originally built as an observatory, since those tend to benefit from height (especially if you’re looking around you rather than up, but for the up ones also) and the builders could easily have put it on top of a mountain or at least some hills, but instead put it by the river. It’s above sea level, and it’s away from light pollution, but there were better locations. Nearby.

So either it wasn’t an observatory, and it’s been refitted as one, or they had so many observatories they didn’t care about locating them optimally, there was some other factor making having the tower there important even if it was suboptimal in terms of observation capacity. Or, potentially, it’s been moved since it was built!

:} Yay thank for being interested by the foreshadowing. I tried to put just enough in without actively overshadowing the actual place-setting-up and making the reader impatient with the description. 

"If you look through an enchanted telescope you may see trees without needles fail halfway up the nearest of the great peaks, and even these fail before the top, though there is a span of nearly barren stone past that line, before the snow begins." you: mentions different plants living in different climates me: :0 / there's so much good description!! its all so pretty!! (2/?)

sflka;l;jlk i mean yeah, that’s pretty straightforward isn’t it. But! It establishes How Much Mountain it is visually rather than by saying ‘it was a big fucking mountain’ or ‘it was tall enough for the thinness of atmosphere near the top to create a small tundra region.’

o(*￣▽￣*)ブ

<3 Thank you! I kinda cut loose lmao.

"blocks veined with every color, pale blues and purples, reds and greens and golden-duns all mottling toward white and grey and black" god i want to live there so badly!! this tower is meeting all my standards!! cool pretty magic tower with rad telescopes!!! / "make a remark no one present understands about a Doctor named Seuss. His guide, the dousing tracker Amnaphi, will assume this person to be a famous astronomer from his homeland." im love!! misunderstandings about references!! (?/?)

💗💖✨ Yay! That’s an important feeling to create in fantasy, imo. The wanting. 

I really enjoyed playing with the standard forms for ‘thing made of marble’ here, because all these marbles really exist, but in spite of the existence of the word ‘marbled’ our narrative uses of it tend to be tied up with Neoclassical aesthetics. So very white and smooth, yeah?

Also idk if it’s obvious to the reader but this Tower is to some degree in dialogue with Orthanc, which made a great impression on my mind as a child as the iconic wizardly tower, and while I don’t disagree with any of Tolkien’s use of symbolism for the purposes he was deploying it, there’s so much potential in Isengard as a setting that LotR had no space to explore, even if Tolkien would have noticed those angles at all.

Like...the parkland around the Tower is shown being despoiled for the orcish war machine and then reconquered by the forest, but of course it wasn’t forest to begin with. What was it for before Saruman lost his shit? Ordered gardens, for peaceful contemplation? Who dedicated the space that way? Who maintained it? 

Did Saruman employ a gardener? Did he design his own gardens, or did they come with the keep, which we’re informed was built not by him but by the Numenoreans? 

(“I liked white better” is still one of the greatest lines in a fantasy novel, Tolkien does not get enough credit for his contextually hilarious one-liners that rely on pointed code-switching, but Saruman’s evil rainbow oil-slick robes also sounded really baller and it’s kind of a shame they were not attempted for the movie lol.)

The fact that this is a world designed around a kid getting portal-fantasied into it and staying for 30 years really gives me some options which are fun to deploy but also like. Risky lmao. Because it encourages the reader to surface from the setting-logic and apply their own perspective, which can really break up the magic.

Being able to zoom out on the Tower after all that detail and be like ‘it’s awesome but also it looks like something Doctor Seuss would draw’ was fun though.

"Within the even hexagon of its outer wall, the Tower encloses a great parkland, enough that if it was all put under cultivation it could easily feed as many people as could live in the Tower itself." the tower has PLANTS i love it so much / "Ten Years’ Winter" god PLEASE tell me this is going to get into the agriculture and society stuff game of thrones didn't about long winters that would be SO cool / "Watchers of the Stars" AND they have a cool name holy shit (?/?)

Plants are important! As is food supply. As everyone who’s been reading this blog for a while already knows I think lol.

I mean, it’s not about that, really? The Ten Years’ Winter is a historical event--the most recent meteor impact severe enough to have global climate fallout. The dust it kicked up took a while to settle, and the famines were pretty severe.

But the cultural consequences of something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago exist, and are important, including the relationship between governance and disaster preparedness, which varies a lot regionally as you may imagine. 

Astronomy has a long history as a wizardly sort of activity in the real world, both because it’s had continual overlap with astrology and just because the process has always been mystical and abstruse. In this setting, with a history of both devastating meteor impacts and being invaded from the Moon, but also actual magic, it’s got more obvious practical importance. Although since neither of these are remotely everyday occurrences, the average person on the street might not agree lol.

So it’s on the one hand a purely descriptive title, and on the other hand a serious boast, suggesting as it does that they are primarily responsible for Watching The Sky For Stuff. While also having broader philosophical implications and just sounding nice lol. 

You gotta have good marketing if you want to persist as a wizardly order, because if talented students aren’t motivated to come to you how will you gain new members? Natural replacement is not an ideal strategy to say the least. That’s how you turn into a cult instead of an intellectual powerhouse.

"The northern third of the Tower’s park contains neatly regimented orchards, apples, pears, plums, and a few rows of carefully tended peaches and apricots, all clipped flat against low brick walls angled south and slightly west." hhh t r e e s / "wizards, while enthusiastic about innovation in the abstract, hate change." me too, wizards. me too / "The Tower grounds are filled with refugees." ooh now we get to why everything was empty earlier (?/?)

Trees! Which are also food!

And technology lol. Greenhouses built against fruit walls with good insulation are so much more sensible than ones heated from inside. Obviously as a passive solar-powered technology these only work when the sun is available and not, for example, cut off by a giant dust cloud. 

These people are fairly acutely aware of their dependence on the sun and it figures prominently in a majority of their religions and their magical theory, even more than in ours.

There seems to be a mild consensus that the wizards are relatable. In truth: we are all wizards. :D

Yup! At long last lol.

"This division corresponds imperfectly to the usual split of the town by the course of the Meroda." because people!! take comfort!! in what normalcy they can find!! / "Makeshift pallets line the spaces between every fruit wall—the injured are being laid out here, now that the Tower is full, to get the benefit at night of the warmth meant to mature fruit." the awesome magic tower people trying to do everything they can for the injured who come to them for help in case i thought i couldn't be (?)

more in love / "Half of them are making ready to turn south along the Meroda." oh nooooo / "but the Moon People are the successors of the ancient magics, and just because they could not break the walls the last time they came, according to legend, does not mean they have not worked out a method now." im so worried for the people oh no (?)

Yeah! It really seemed natural. But of course they also aren’t recreating it obsessively; lots of people are grouping up with relatives who normally live across the river, or with people in the same line of work on the river, because people also adapt to circumstances.

No institution is ever perfect, of course, but I’m glad the Watchers have come across this way so far. They’re broadly well-intentioned and mostly well-organized.

And they were not ready for this.

A significant fraction of the reason for the order of the Watchers to exist at all, particularly in this observatory with its great eye fixed ever on the face of the green moon, is to be able to warn the world if this ever happens again. But the Moon People knew they were being watched, this time, and they kept all the build-up to mobilization that might have given them away on the far side of the moon until the last minute.

What the Magister is doing, as I hope was made clear or at least successfully indicated--I wish your commentary on the ending had come through!--is summoning what turns out to be an actual child from another world to do hero stuff.

Even if he’d gotten an adult that would be kidnapping someone to help with your problems, a routine element of the portal fantasy whose ethics have been addressed in a variety of ways, most famously ‘is Lion Jesus and always right.’ 

The reason they need a hero from another world is that the Moon People build a lot of their wards and their offensive and disabling magical attacks around a targeting system based on what planet people are from, because even though they’re originally from the same stock--they’re the descendants of ancient moon colonists who evacuated ahead of a major meteor impact somewhere approaching four thousand years ago--on a magical level having been born and raised on the planet or the moon makes a pretty huge difference. 

So no one can get into the place their magic space elevator is anchored and fuck it up so they can’t keep bringing troops and supply in and loot out. Their single supply line is their only strategic weakness, and they’ve taken appropriate precautions.

Getting someone in from a third location is the best idea anyone’s been able to come up with in the very limited time available. Since no one can figure out how to turn one of the Moon People against the cause they came here for, on short notice, when they aren’t even stopping to talk to anyone so far. Like, that’s clearly not going to happen.

Heron Yl Fanult isn’t unaware that it’s ethically questionable, but he’s doing it anyway.

So I’m glad the ominous imminent oncoming of the Moon People can really be felt, because that atmosphere is fairly essential context for the decisionmaking going on at the top of the Tower.

"Young wizards sit in their bunks, six each to rooms that were previously individual, and hold lighting cupped dancing in their palms." a quick break from being worried to point out that this is rad as hell / "some with their heads decorously covered..." cultural differences!! especially with regional purposes like the Hedro!! 

Thank you! 😆💖 I thought so too lol. 

It also establishes the parameters of the magic system a little more. Throwing lightning bolts is pretty iconicly high-powered, right? And here it’s what most of the student wizards are practicing in anticipation of a battle, because most of them aren’t specced into combat and this is actually one of the easier lethal spells to master, especially if you have an academic background.

‘Electrocute’ isn’t a very flexible spell and it’s easy to lose control of, but it’s actually easier than, say, ‘set on fire to a significant degree in a non-electrical manner’ because concentrating a lot of heat in a certain location takes a lot more brute force than encouraging ionization. 

You can pull most of the actual destructive force for the palm lightning spell out of the physical air and/or earth if you grasp the principles, which is much easier than channeling a comparable amount of magic directly because it doesn’t have to go through you. 

The limiting factors on magic in this setting are how much power you can tap into and how much of it you can actually use without hurting or killing yourself. It’s not usually a lot, though the amount can be increased by things like choosing your workspace, prepping your workspace, and a whole lot of practice and meditation and things like that.

Magical traditions that get bundled under the heading of wizardry tend to focus on force multiplication, obtaining enough contextual understanding of a subject to make whatever power is applied go further. This means a lot of studying theory and using magic to make observations (such as the existence of microorganisms and their connection to disease) and often results in making clever devices based on what you’ve learned that may not actually wind up being magical at all. 

Which is why the solar greenhouse proposal is considered ‘more wizardly’ than the fruit walls, which are wizardly in the first place even though the technology is pretty widespread at this point--it’s carried the principle of minimizing the energy you have to invest to get the result you want to the logical conclusion, where you don’t have to do any magic at all, you just set up the situation and get out of the way and the sun will do the work for you.

Other schools of magic, particularly religious ones, are more likely to emphasize just getting better at handling energy for yourself, which tends to yield a lot more in the way of immediate practical dividends and in a lot of quarters wizards who don’t do something obviously practical like physic or smithcraft with their theoretical background are considered crackpots or dilettantes 

An impression helped along by the fact that being taken on as a student of wizardry at a basic level tends to focus more on your reading comprehension than your ability to actually do any magic, so in places where religious and wizardly institutions coexist the most talented students have a tendency to gravitate toward the religious life. This is particularly marked in areas religiously dominated by the Compact of the Golden Circle, wherein full ordination is contingent on being able to pull off certain fairly hefty rituals, so if you aren’t physically or mentally up to that kind of magical heavy lifting your religious career will stall out in one of the lay fraternities. In some of the cities on Sutouchel, the landmass to the southeast where the Compact is based, a slang term for wizard is ‘sanctum washout.’

But of course force multiplication is something that can scale up pretty far, and studying theory doesn’t stop you from also putting work into your practical skills, and not having talent isn’t the only reason someone would choose not to seek out a clerical career, if it’s even an option. Religion along the Meroda is pretty localized; communities tend to have local deities who correspond to a natural feature like the nearest mountain or the river or something, and if that deity rates a fulltime shrine the keeper also tends to be the major local medical provider, and since the wizards got settled in at the Tower it’s become pretty popular for shrinekeeping families to send their kids there for a year or two to get some educational polish in addition to what their parent already emphasized.

So depending on where you live and what your personal experience has been you’re going to have very different ideas about what wizards are good for.

Hrm. I’ve gone on a tangent. But that wound up taking so long you came back! :D I love it when being turtle works out in my favor.

Or was this actually the meta I was supposed to be doing in the first place? Aaaaa who knows.

im fairly confident you said eight asks survived so this is number nine? anyways onwards! "The hale survivors of the First Battle of the Second Descent sit waiting in their leathers, jack-chains and helmets laughably inadequate armor against the coming danger, and yet the best hope now just as they were on Carun Tol once the wizard fell" i have a lot of emotions about how their best bet is also a terrible bet but its all they have (9/?)

Yes 8. 

Woo, thank you! ^^ & I love that you described it that way because that also describes the ‘summon alien’ spell Yl Fanult is casting and echoing the same emotional theme throughout the scene was very much the goal here.

"Threads have escaped from the braids pinned across the top of her skull: she has not had the chance to take them down for two days." god just the continuation of how desperate everything is / "He leans forward to peer through the narrow glass that has been turned on its articulated base to face the middle of the room, and relaxes very slightly. At least there has been no catastrophic alteration there, either." what does that one do id assume theres no approching army in the middle of the room -

:D Yeah, the fact that one of the chief medics available is already overworked to the point of neglecting nonessential personal hygiene and the enemy isn’t even here yet I hoped would resonate.

Well, remember how some of the telescopes at the beginning point in directions not included in the normal three dimensions of space? :}

- "trained as it long has been upon the face of the moon" also forgot to mention their enemies being from the moon is Rad As Hell / "He snaps his fingers for a spark that falls into the deep circular groove full of distilled spirits, and steps through that as well. He is not burned." ooooh whats he doing / "At his feet lie a glittering piece of gold ore, a moonstone, and a carefully sanded round of pumice." i see the connection to the moonstone bc moon army but i wonder about the others -

Thank you! It took a fair amount of poking before I decided it was a solid approach; it provides just enough physical alienation that there’s no direct cultural relationship and you can have that ‘everyone in the entire world Disliked That’ vibe, without needing to create any complicated magical and cultural explanation for such a long run of isolationism. They were out of contact because they were On The Moon.

Also I really get a kick out of putting space invaders in a fantasy setting in a way that stops just short of turning into sci-fi.

I’m glad the ritual lead-up is exciting! Even if the foreshadowing wasn’t as obvious as I thought it was lol. That’s fixable. 

Gold is for the sun, moonstone is yeah for the moon lol (although in other circumstances people also use jade, because it’s been a long time since the moon was uniformly silver on account of it having been terraformed a few thousand years ago) and pumice is for the world--it’s a stone full of air that floats on water, so it’s popular as an anchoring device for rituals that call on all three local celestial bodies.

"He cannot take much time. He has only until the ring of fire dies." whats he doingggggg / anyways i love this so much!! the descriptions are gorgeous and im so invested in all of everything!! i hope you write more im so curious about it all!! 

XD Ok I covered this already, I would have saved it for down here or Been Mysterious if tumblr hadn’t eaten the last few asks the first time lol. Thank you so much again! For encouragement! Before and now! I’ll try! To keep it going!

Here’s hoping this successfully posts, tumblr just kicked me onto New Dashboard again and disabled the turn-it-off button, so now my alternate posting strategy is borked up too. 🤞😅😘

[okaypie]

*flips on shades, dabs, does a cart wheel, sticks the landing, cracks knuckles* I can't really say all for one character I think so uh, NAH FUCK IT U PROBABLY CAN FIGURE OUT HOW ALL FOR JEREMY HAHAHAHAHA

HANNAH I S2G I HAVE PRACTICE IN AN HOUR 

#squad:  who's friends with who? what are the squad dynamics like?

OKAY SO, I’m gonna write this as if Jeremy were still living in hawaii and Happy. He hung out with the jocks but he was the decent jock due to not wanting to be an asshole and anxiety. He was made fun of a lot bc he backed out on a lot of shit except for one time when he agreed to break into an abandoned building that wasn’t really abandonded and he got grounded for a month.

microscope:  zoom in -- describe the little, insignificant details about an OC.

When Jeremy smiles he has super duper subtle dimples. His hair looks kind of frizzy but is actually super nice and soft. He has stretch marks on his thighs bc my boi is thicc. He has freckles but you can’t see them like at all unless he gets a sun burn or gets like that pale-looking sick deal. 

fragrance:  what do your OCs smell like?

Weed and old spice

photo album:  describe one of your OCs' favorite memories.

When him and his dad played ukulele during the Eo E Emalani I Alakai Festival for the first time bc he felt like he was finally good enough   

mixtape:  5 songs that describe your OC(s) or songs they themselves would like.

wardrobe:  what's your OC(s) style like?

Basketball/Cargo shorts, t-shirt and sandals 

lightning:  who's the most impulsive character? and who is their impulse control?

Okay im going to ref rp for this one 

Mark’s oc Sol ( @snowmiku) is the impulse and jeremy would be impulse control or for vic and jeremy victor would be impulse control bc foster parent and jeremy would be impulse

ufo:  identity! what are some key identifying qualities or traits of your OC(s)? how to they identify in regards to gender/sexuality?

Jeremy is my bi guy ready to try! He doesn’t really discover it until later in life tho which is okay! He’s also demisexual bc fuckin people is a weird concept to him unless they’re super close! 

love note:  who likes who? crushes? relationships? are they mutual or unrequited?

Canonically none, rp sol

poison:  vices/bad habits? what are they? how do they affect your OC?

So after Jeremy’s parents died he started smoking a lot more pot? Which wasn’t that bad until he greened out and everything went downhill from there. He tries to act like everything is fine and dandy but it’s pretty obvious he’s dealing with a lot of trauma that he doesn’t want to come to terms with

compass:  who's the moral compass? in general: what are your OCs' morality like? do they have high morals, or not? are their morals self imposed, or do they base their morals on religion/family/influence of others?

Jeremy bases his morals on those around him but also more or less for himself? Like if he really trusts and knows the person he’ll give his fuckin life for them but if he’s like...meh...with them then he’ll do what he can...but if what he does doesn’t work the first time they’re fucked

track & field:  which (if any) of your OCs are athletic? what sports to they play? which of your OCs would go HARD in P.E.?

JEREMY IS ATHLETIC AS FUCK. He loves basketball, football, and surfing and he likes doing early morning jogs. When its dodgeball day in P.E. you better hide from this boy

parachute:  who does your OC(s) trust the most? who makes them feel safe? who would they do absolutely anything for?

Him family (both real and foster(yes, hannah, this includes pat))

conspiracy theory:  what are your OC's beliefs? are they skeptics or do they believe easily? who acts on blind faith? who needs to see to believe?

Jeremy follows the Huna(New Age) religion which is the semi-traditional religion of Hawaii. He does what he can when it comes to practicing it.

zodiac:  what's their sign? does it influence their personality? do they care about astrology?

Virgo! It doesnt seem to influence him but he does care about astrology

spellbook:  are any of your OC(s) supernatural? if so, what are they/what are their abilities?

nope

contact:  how does your OC(s) feel about touch/physical contact? are they affectionate? if so, how do they display affection to others?

jeremy was really touch-starved for a while so hell take affection where he can get it. hes a huge platonic cuddler, he tends to sling his arm around ppl a lot bc he knows that some ppl are really bad about being touched. He gives A+ massages tho just an fyi

interiors:  describe your OC(s) bedroom/home/or a place they consider "theirs". what's in it? do certain items have a special significance to your OC?

His room usually has a lot of natural light and smells like pot lmao. His beds a mess and he collects a lot of weird shit, mainly shells tho. He has one picture of his parents that he keeps on his person at all times even tho its getting kind of worn

hobby:  what do they love? what captivates them? what are their passions?

Jeremy loves music and people and parties (in small amounts) He really loves basketball and learning about other cultures too? So yeah, also history. Lots of history, but he keeps that shit inside bc “haha that’s so nerdy why would i do that???”

psyche:  what's their head space like? do they have any mental illnesses? how do they process difficult or emotional situations? what are their coping mechanisms?

Jeremy is a mess. he has moderate-sever depression, anxiety, and PTSD. When he’s put into a difficult situation he deadass has a panic attack and the way to get him to calm down is to try and talk about how his dad would handle the situation, it brings back even more bad memories but being reminded of the good and of what was helps too. He copes (unhealthily) through pot, and he has therapy sessions every weekend

chess board:  who is the most logical? or the schemer/planner?

Jeremy is usually p logical (sometimes)

shooting star:  if your OC(s) could have one wish what would it be?

That he could go home and everything would be fine

[argaliaofficial]

@sangwoosers alright here is that general overview of jace post i promised u!!

i didnt intend to get this long but i wanted to write a backstory rundown again because each time i keep adding new insights that really helps me flesh out my characts i hope its not too daunting--

i also included more simple trivia bits at the bottom too

alright so jace, birthname jacques viorel eden, was originally a member of nobility, and also a fandom oc (for tales of vesperia lol) however recently i’ve been thinking of working out my own original universe to squish him into (hence the lack of proper names for places/people in this draft cuz im still in the world building process lol)

thankfully, his backstory pretty much works for the setting i am thinking about. he was born the youngest of 7, to a mother who wanted nothing to do with him because he wasn’t a cute girl she could project her lost dreams onto, and a father, who while a nice man, was always so busy with work he hardly had time for his children. his siblings too were less than nice as well, and that is mostly due to his eldest brother, gabriel. gabe was nothing but a vicious bully to whoever his younger siblings were, and by the time jacques came along, he pretty much had the other brothers tormenting jacques for their own amusement.

he had two older sisters, as well, but only one of them, annabelle, ever paid attention to him. she was a kind sister, always watching after him and making sure he was alright due to the fact that jacques had a weak immune system and got sick often.

he was very very young (bought 5 years old) when his father was accused of conspiring against the monarchy. jacques, of course, had no clue what was happening; he had woken up extremely early in morning to a very serious anna telling him to gather a few valuables and get dressed. due to their relation with their father, the council (currently the powerhead due to the lack of an emperor/empress at the time) saw fit to punish the entire family, and any generation that came after them. 

the scorn from the citizens, and the burning of the brand on his hand made the walk though town to the edge of the city borders terrifying. and then the trek through the wilderness?

his father didn’t survive. being the older man he was, he was the one to fall behind when a pack of vicious wolves attacked the family

from there, it seemed as if everything continued to grow worse. jacques’s mother fell into a deep state of depression, and with no access to their vast wealth before, food and housing was scarce- especially for a family that had just been branded public enemy #1

they eventually managed to skip over to a new continent as refugees, and from there, they were given a very basic, tiny home to live in. his mother’s depression only grew worse, and soon, she was having a series of flings with a married man

of course, when he found out she was knocked up, he wanted nothing to do with her. for 9 months she carried the child, only to give birth to another boy. this was the final nail in the coffin, and a few weeks later, jacques found her dead, having committed suicide. 

The father of his step son took the baby in, but left the other children to their own devices. from there. everyone just went their own way.

anna took care of jacques the best she could, managing to save up some money to get him a bow and cloak for one of his birthdays. it was also around here where he started trying to learn about medicine and healing magic in hopes of being able to get a job in the field to help out

anna, in the meantime while jacques studied, eventually married a man in hopes of getting them some sort of financial stability and a roof over their head. he was by all means a monster, however, abusing both her and jacques in more than one way.

one day, when he was about 14 years old, he tried to stand up to anna’s husband. this went over about as well as could be expected, jacques was so severely beaten he was bed bound for a week. because of this, he eventually ran off, terrified to stay, and terrified to return. eventually, he managed to crawl into a new town, on the brink of dehydration and starving. from there, he bounced around, trying to make something of himself. he continued studying healing artes on his downtime, and continued practicing archery. he also took up offensive magic after he got fairly proficient at healing, thinking having multiple skills would be useful, and that if he got strong enough he could return to his sister and get her out of that hellish home. it wasn’t easy, having grown up frail and sickly, but he persevered. he was going to make up for abandoning his sister, he would make his step brother pay for the shit he had put them through

those plans unraveled when he stumbled upon  a secret base for a notorious assassin’s guild. there’s something terrifying about being dragged to the dungeons to be interrogated by the leader of the guild. something terrifying about your life on the line, as the guild could not risk outsiders revealing the location. jacques didn’t want to die. he still had to return to his sister- his last family member. quickly, he tried to sell his skills. a guild of assassins could surely use a healer, and he was a fairly competent one. he could also use a bow and arrow, and was a fast learner. he could pick up any other trade they needed him to.

it took a few days, but he was accepted under strict surveillance until he could be proven trust worthy. from then on, he would need to create an alias and discard his past. there was no room for that as a newfound assassin.

in a sense, jacques eden had died, and jace had taken his place. jace was supposed to be nothing like jacques. jace was supposed to be cold, calculating, detached.

he couldn’t help but feel bitter, though. his entire life had been in shambles since he was a small child, and now he had to throw away his family name for good. 

one day, a new kid was brought into the guild. he called himself zelvene, or zelv, for short. he was a kid more damaged and fucked up than jace was himself. and jace had been partnered with him.

the two did not get along at all. zelv was a rambunctious nut, and jace was mr. killjoy. it was like that for the longest time before a mutual sort of stolckholm syndrome kicked in, and they became sorta friends- to the point where they are weirdly protective of each other, but still banter like they hate each other.

zelv eventually became privy to jace’s past, and jace became privy to zelv’s. it helped them understand each other, and in turn, helped them to care for each other. it was strange for both of them- having someone care. jace had known it with anna, but it had been so long since he had seen her that he had almost forgotten what it was like.

the two, being the damaged insomniacs that they were, would spend late nights talking about getting revenge. zelv said he’d already gotten his when he killed his parents and burnt the house down, and he told jace he’d help him carry out whatever plan he could come up with to get his vengeance. 

and one day, it appeared that the perfect opportunity would present itself. a client came in one night, asking for a hit to be put on a man named faris clemens- a rising knight in the very city jace had been unjustly exiled from. the details about why they wanted faris dead were uncertain, but it didnt matter. an excuse to go back and deal a heavy blow to that shit hole of a capital... maybe get to ruin a few other things while he was there-

he jumped on the job immediately, and zelv was fine with it himself. if all went well, they would be able to do satisfying damage to the city.

he sadly could never return to anna anymore. not with how mightily he had fallen down a dark path, but if he could do this, and then kill his brother-in-law, and leave anna a fair sum of money to get herself a stable home while she found a job to support herself...

well, maybe that would make him feel a bit better with himself.

and there ya go. backstory rundown lol. now for the easier to get thru trivia shit lol

by the start of the story he is 23 years old

his astrological sign is gemini and his birthday is march 14

he really really likes coffee

he clung to studying nobility customs and aesthetics, wanting to cling onto what bit of family tradition he could remember

he’s a moody piece of shit and extremely sentimental

he lowkey loves cuddles and affection and could snuggle for hours if given the chance

he’s highkey paranoid tho and that interferes with a lot of personal shit like that

if you wanna ask anything else about him feel free! i hope you enjoyed reading this :)